The Insect-Populated Mind How Insects Have Influenced the Evolution of Consciousness

by Spooner, David

• ISBN13: 9780761831754
• ISBN10: 0761831754
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-08-22
• Publisher: Hamilton Books

Summary

In The Insect-Populated Mind, author David Spooner proposes a close connection between aspects of insect evolution and the human intellect. By examining seemingly disparate subjects, such as entomology, language, theory, genetics, astronomy, literature, and music, Spooner proves that synthesis is indeed possible. Once this fusion is achieved, the human species can be seen as connected not just to the great apes, but also via consciousness to metamorphic insects. While considering Richard Dawkins' and Susan Blackmore's expositions of memes, Spooner suggests that the concept of memes remains a peripheral understanding of religion and the arts. The book also presents arguments on the roots and nature of the mind in the work of Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
PART I	1	(62)
Ape, Insect and Human	3	(11)
The Cosmic Cultural Faculty in Relation to the Meme Machine	14	(8)
Shakespeare and the Nature of Verbal and Musical Language	22	(7)
Schopenhauer, Music and The Order of Things	29	(8)
From Apuleius to A.R. Wallace: Evolutionary Theory and Some Literary Animals and Insects	37	(8)
The Greek Supplementals in Their Connection to ψYXH: How Breath, Soul and Butterfly are Linguistically Interconnected	45	(6)
Coleridge's Tetraktys: Summit of His Metaphysics, Death of His Poetry	51	(5)
William Blake, Rhapsodist of the Fourfold	56	(7)
PART II	63	(86)
From the Big Bang to Life on Earth	65	(8)
Insects and Mind: The Poetry of Damaso Alonso	73	(9)
A.R. Wallace's Swallowtails: Mimicry and Evolution	82	(14)
Of Cells and Mutation	96	(7)
Ancient and Medieval Cosmology	103	(14)
The Spread of the Fourfold Constant into Nineteenth and Twentieth Century American Literature	117	(13)
Thoreau's Insect Science	130	(9)
The Scientific Ambiguities of Literary Creation: Nabokov's Art of Evolution	139	(10)
Appendix	149	(8)
Bibliography	157	(24)
Index	181